This being Hallowe’en, I felt like I should serve you something scary.
But what?
Verily, we’ve talked about some scary things here:
- Dangers to life and limb in academic chemistry labs, and the suggestion that lab safety is too expensive.
- My unsavory habit of sending gastropods in my garden to a soapy end
- Implicit biases that lurk in our brains, waiting to seize control
- Crackpots
- Plagiarists
- Scientific frauds
More scary subjects have come up on my other blog, including:
- Scientific ghostwriting
- The humble chemistry set (which is enough to scare the Department of Homeland Security silly)
- A scientific job market that is often cruel
- Researchers who think it is a good idea to chain young researchers to the lab bench and throw away the key
- Scientists who have a pronounced aversion to thinking about ethics
Making this list, I’m very glad it’s still light out! Otherwise I might be quaking uncontrollably.
Truth be told, as someone who works with ethics for a living, I’m less afraid of monsters than I am of ordinary humans who lose sight of their duties to their fellow humans.
And frankly, when it comes to things that go bump in the night, I’m less terrified than curious …
especially since the things that go “bump” in my kitchen usually involve the intriguing trio of temperature-, pressure-, and phase-changes — which is to say, it’s nothing a little science couldn’t demystify.
Have a happy, safe, and ethical Hallowe’en!
